Chapter 4: Three Important Types of Assessment

Portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment are all essential in a differentiated classroom. Portfolios provide a long-term look at a student’s work and progress throughout a period of time and can be valuable to help see improvement. Rubrics, either analytic or holistic, are great for assessing papers and projects that can go into portfolios. Rubrics are a learned skill and are never perfect and can always be revised and reused. Student self-assessment is wonderful because it allows the students to reflect on their progress, their strengths, and their weaknesses. I am partial to all three types of assessment and will likely be happy to use all of them in my teaching. I’d use analytic rubrics to grade assignments and allow students to use the same rubrics to assess themselves and then put all the works and filled in rubrics into a portfolio for later review.